As a small business owner you know it’s hard to find good employees.  Your job postings just aren’t getting the high number of applications as they have in the past.  The applicants you are interviewing aren’t good as they seem on paper or are not impressing you the way you had hoped.  Or maybe you have thought you hired someone only to have them not call you after an offer of employment has been made. 

In case you don’t know we are currently in what MKS HR calls a candidate driven market. So what does that mean to you, the small business owner? It means that the days of posting your Job Ad and having 100’s upon 100’s of resumes to review are pretty much gone.  And even if you do get a lot of resumes, 99% of the time they aren’t the kind of applicants you want anyway.  So how do you attract the right applicant’s that are genuinely interested in working for your company?  Once you hire them, how do ensure you make them stay past the first week, the first month or first year?

Each of those questions have a long answer so that’s why this is part 1 of a 3-part blog series – Hiring the Right Candidate the first time & Making them stay.

In a previous blog post, we talked about creating a targeted Job Ad that attracts your Ideal Candidate Avatar.  This targeted Job Ad will be written in a way that has key words strategically placed so candidates will find your ad through online searches, and it tells candidates what the job is and why they want to work for you. 

In 2019 (& it’s been this way for the last 1-3 years) it’s not just what your targeted Job Ad says-it’s about the other ways to attract your ideal candidate avatar that will make candidates apply to your job openings. 

In today’s job market, candidates do their homework on companies before deciding to apply to a job. This is why you, the employer, need to make sure you attract the right ones and hook them in, so they apply to your job.

One way to do that is to use video’s as part of your hiring process and posting your job on Facebook jobs or other social media platforms.  Now as with all other online platforms, Facebook may or may not make sense for you to use.  If you need help in seeing what platform works, click here to schedule a call with MKS HR.

The video will mainly be about what it’s like to work for your company as opposed to describing the job.  It will give them an inside look into your company, and this is done by having your other employees in the video talk about what it’s like to work there, what their role in the company is, what their thoughts on the hiring process is, etc. 

The possibilities are endless as to what you can talk about, and of course you will make more than 1 video right? Yes that’s right you will.  Just keep in mind when creating these videos that they are done in way where you can use them repeatedly.  And you can even shoot videos that relate to specific roles in your company or maybe even roles that you always want to be filling a candidate pipeline for.  Here is an example that the city of Edmonton, did for hiring mechanics to work for maintaining their fleet of buses –https://www.facebook.com/CityofEdmontonJobs/videos/729723094029540/?v=729723094029540 ).  When you watch this video note that it doesn’t mention anything about the job itself-it’s a candid look into what the other employee’s experiences are working for the city of Edmonton. 

Once the video is ready to be viewed online, post it on Facebook, or other social media platforms that your ideal candidate avatar is on.  For this blog we will talk about posting it onto Facebook.  So there are 2 main places in your Facebook account to post the job and the video.

The first place is on your Facebook business page. So when you are logged into your Facebook business page, you will want to find the tab that’s called Manage Jobs-this is where you will post your job. You can use the same targeting with a job opening that you would when using Facebook ads-you can choose a specific geographic location, and other demographic information. 

Once that’s done, choose your budget, which we recommend a budget of $50-75 per month, which doesn’t sound like much but you if you have written the job ad in a way that attracts the right candidates, you will get a good return.

Once that’s all done, you are ready to use the video you shot.  Go back into the part of your business page where you publish regular posts (this is the 2nd place to post the video).  Type in how your company is hiring (don’t mention the title) and for them to check out the video to see what it’s like to work for you.  Attached the video file, and add a link to a Google form (more on that in a moment), choose to “boost” your post and you are all set.

So the Google form is a link where it takes candidates to a form, they can fill out to express their interest in working for you.  It asks them their name, email address, phone number, how they heard about the opening (you want to track this), and other questions that relate specifically to the role. 

Just remember that once you get notifications that candidates are filling out the form, you MUST call them to book a time to speak with them to go over the job and their experience.  It’s at this time you ask them to apply to your job posting, so let them know you will be emailing them a link to apply.  Make sure the link takes them directly to the page where they can easily submit their resume for you to review. 

The link for the form will be at the bottom of the post, because you want to make it as easy as possible for candidates to show their interest. This post with the video and the Google form can be shared on your Facebook business page, and other social media platforms you use for your business.

Need help creating one of these videos? Click here to schedule a Discovery call with MKS HR.

Click here to downloadyour own Candidate Interest Form where all the hard work is done for you!